Beneath it was one sentence.
**Your parents made the same mistake you’re making now.**
Then there was a knock at the apartment door.
Three slow knocks.
Alvarez reached beneath his jacket.
“Stay here.”
He moved toward the door.
Vicky opened her bedroom.
“Michael?”
“Stay inside!”
Alvarez looked through the peephole.
His entire body stiffened.
“What?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he slowly drew his gun.
Another knock.
Three times.
Then a woman’s voice came from the hallway.
A voice I knew.
A voice that was impossible.
“Michael?”
Every hair on my arms rose.
Vicky stepped into the hallway behind me.
Her cereal bowl slipped from her hands and shattered.
She stared at the door.
Her face went white.
Because she recognized the voice too.
“Mom?”
Nobody moved.
The voice came again.
Weak.
Terrified.
Alive.
“Michael, please open the door.”
I stared at Detective Alvarez.
He stared back.
And suddenly I understood something far worse than the possibility that Denise and Howard had murdered my parents.
